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Sam Shepard Quotes

Powerful Sam Shepard for Daily Growth

To sit on a ranch horse that's been broken in, it's like getting in a Porsche.

- Sam Shepard

Broken, Horse, Getting, Ranch

I think Bolano had a generosity about him that was unique. He seemed to include so many people in the circle of his adventures, whereas I felt like I was pretty selfish.

- Sam Shepard

Think, Pretty, Include, Generosity

When you write a play, you work out like a musician on a piece of music. You find all the rhythms and the melody and the harmonies and take them as they come.

- Sam Shepard

Play, Like, Rhythms, Musician

I remember, as a kid, going into other people's houses. Everything was different. The smells in the kitchen were different; the clothing was different. That bothered me. There's something very mysterious about other families and the way they function.

- Sam Shepard

I Remember, Other, Very, Clothing

The great thing for me, now, is that writing has become more and more interesting. Not just as a craft but as a way into things that are not described. It's a thing of discovering. That's when writing is really working. You're on the trail of something, and you don't quite know what it is.

- Sam Shepard

Trail, Craft, Now, Great Thing

I'm not put off so much by first-time directors if the script is great. If the script isn't there, I'm not there.

- Sam Shepard

Great, Directors, Put, First-Time

My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remarkable how these young kids are now turned on to more traditional old-time music.

- Sam Shepard

Young, Turned, Banjo

To sing a song is quite different than to write a poem. I'm not and never will be a novelist, but to write a novel is not the same thing as writing a play. There is a difference in form, but essentially what you're after is the same thing.

- Sam Shepard

Song, Play, Same Thing, Novelist

Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.

- Sam Shepard

Away, Very, Allow, Tactics

I've always felt a great affinity with music. I've felt myself to be more of a musician than anything else, though I'm not proficient in any one instrument. But I think I have a musical sense of things... and writing seems to me to be a musical experience - rhythmically and in many other ways.

- Sam Shepard

Other, I Think, Instrument, Rhythmically

My dad was a kind of semiprofessional Dixieland-type drummer, and I learned the drums from him. When I was about twelve, we bought our first Ludwig drum set from a pawnshop - a marching-band bass drum, great big tom-toms, and big, deep snare drums.

- Sam Shepard

Deep, Big, Dad, Drum Set

A lot of American playwrights seem to have a career as a playwright. I don't consider it a career at all.

- Sam Shepard

Career, Playwright, Lot, Playwrights

Writing for theatre is certainly different to writing an essay or any other kind of fiction or prose: it's physical. You're also telling a story, but sometimes the story isn't exactly what you intend; maybe you uncover something you had no idea you were going to uncover.

- Sam Shepard

Other, Fiction, Telling, Intend

The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness.

- Sam Shepard

Behind, Success Is, Having, Emptiness

Sometimes in someone's gestures you can notice how a parent is somehow inhabiting that person without there being any awareness of that. Sometimes you can look at your hand and see your father.

- Sam Shepard

Father, Parent, Sometimes, Inhabiting

I'm inhabiting a life I'm not supposed to be in... and at certain times in my life, I have felt a wrongness. And not a moral wrongness but a sense that this isn't what I was born to be doing.

- Sam Shepard

My Life, Doing, I Was Born, Inhabiting

It's funny, in a way the actor is a writer. It's not like the two things are so separate as to be like apples and oranges. The writer and the actor are one.

- Sam Shepard

Two, Like, Separate, Oranges

The thing about American writers is that, as a group, they get stuck in the same idea: that we're a continent and the world falls away after us. And it's just nonsense.

- Sam Shepard

Away, Idea, Continent, Stuck

More than anything, falling in love causes a certain female thing in a man to manifest, oddly enough.

- Sam Shepard

Love, Falling, More, Oddly

I think comedy's harder to pull off on the screen than on the stage, anyway. Tragedy is easier on the screen... oddly enough.

- Sam Shepard

Think, Comedy, I Think, Oddly

It's very difficult to escape your background. You know, I don't think it's necessary to even try to escape it. More and more, I start to think that it's necessary to see exactly what it is that you inherited on both ends of the stick: your timidity, your courage, your self-deceit, and your honesty - and all the rest of it.

- Sam Shepard

Courage, Very, Your, Inherited

There's no way to escape the fact that we've grown up in a violent culture, we just can't get away from it, it's part of our heritage. I think part of it is that we've always felt somewhat helpless in the face of this vast continent. Helplessness is answered in many ways, but one of them is violence.

- Sam Shepard

I Think, Violent, Continent, Helpless

I stay away from heavy-handed stuff, the good guy and the bad guy. It just doesn't interest me; all it does is create more fences between people, I think.

- Sam Shepard

Think, Away, I Think, Fences

I've come to feel that if I can't make something happen in under an hour and a half, it's not going to happen in a compelling way in a three-hour play.

- Sam Shepard

Play, Happen, Half, Hour And A Half

There is this aura that the three-act play is the important one: it's the one that you do to win the Pulitzer. Some part of you falls for that, and then after a while, you don't fall for that.

- Sam Shepard

Play, Some, Part, Aura

I'm a great believer in chaos. I don't believe that you start with a formula and then you fulfill the formula. Chaos is a much better instigator, because we live in chaos - we don't live in a rigorous form.

- Sam Shepard

Chaos, Start, Fulfill, Rigorous

I basically live out of my truck - I mean from place to place. I feel more at home in my truck than just about anywhere, which is a sad thing to say, but it's true.

- Sam Shepard

Truck, More, Which, Sad Thing

Hollywood is geared toward teenage idiocy.

- Sam Shepard

Hollywood, Toward, Teenage, Idiocy

For me, playwriting is and has always been like making a chair. Your concerns are balance, form, timing, lights, space, music. If you don't have these essentials, you might as well be writing a theoretical essay, not a play.

- Sam Shepard

Play, Been, Theoretical, Essay

I see a lot of scripts, and very few of them leap off the page at you.

- Sam Shepard

See, Very, Lot, Scripts

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